Page 100 - Cyber Defense eMagazine April 2021 Edition

Failing to Protect Non-human Identities

Non-human Identities will go ungoverned if you only focus on human Identities or users in your environment.
This is a critical mistake. The majority of Identity and Access Management spend goes towards protecting
human accounts. Unfortunately, this means that organizations often overlook the vast number of non-human
Identities in their cloud — which is troubling when considering the breadth and depth of access these
Identities have. If you are unable to continuously audit and monitor what these are, and more importantly,
what they can do, what data they can access, and what they are actually doing, you are running blind and
at great risk.

Without a strong Identity security platform in place, it’s impossible to know when Identities are
misconfigured and being used in malicious ways. Similar to lateral movement from server to server in the
data center, hackers can use Identities to worm their way deeper into your cloud — the end result is wreaking
havoc by stealing information and/or shutting down critical systems.
The Plan Isn’t Working Anymore

As your cloud is embroiled in an Identity crisis, it can steer its way out into a happy, more secure environment.
Organizations can close the gap on this Identity crisis with a few simple steps.

Continuous inventorying and monitoring of all human and non-human Identities, plus their effective
permissions, is possible. With the right tooling, organizations have the ability to track permissions and
provide continuous monitoring within and across their clouds and provide alerts to highlight a risk before it
becomes an incident. In parallel, tools can generate when deviations and/or suspicious activity is detected.
In both cases, teams can use automation to eliminate the Identity security risks and issues at the speed of
the cloud. The end result is a highly resilient organization.

A true Identity crisis usually involves a data breach. So the question remains – do you do something drastic or
do you wait for something drastic to happen in your cloud? Proactive, rather than reactive, measures matter
more now than ever.

About the Author

Eric Kedrosky is CISO and Director of Cloud Research of Sonrai
Security. Eric Kedrosky joined the cloud security software company in
February 2020 after 16 years working in the industry. Highlights from
his career include working as Director of Security & IT at Verafin,
Directory of Information Services & Security at RigNet, and Enterprise
Global Xpress (GX) Manager at Inmarsat. Kedosky graduated from
Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada with a Bachelor of Engineering
with a focus on Computer Systems. He stood out from his fellow
students so much that he immediately got hired as a Security Analyst
at Nortel. He rose quickly through the company’s ranks and left to
pursue an interest in business solutions development with Bluedrop
Performance Learning, the first online learning network. Eric can be
reached online at: LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/erickedrosky
Twitter: @EricKedrosky and at our company website
http://www.sonraisecurity.com

100 Cyber Defense eMagazine – April 2021 Edition
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